


Star Spangled Skull

by Whim_Wham



Category: Invaders (Marvel), Kim Possible (Cartoon), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ancient History, Coercion, Español | Spanish, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fire Powers, Flirting, Games, Gender or Sex Swap, Government Conspiracy, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Guns, Implied Sexual Content, Intersex, Jealousy, Mad Science, Naughtiness, Noogies, Not Wearing Underwear, Office, Other, Parallel Universes, Pheromones, Pixies, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), References to Shakespeare, Sexual Frustration, Shipping, Showers, Slang, Toasting, Training, Villains, Washington D.C.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2018-06-08 04:22:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6838885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whim_Wham/pseuds/Whim_Wham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Directly following the action of Captain America : Civil War, an American magnate, Dell Rusk, bankrolls the U.S. government emergency response to the criminal departure of the Avengers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue : The Red Skull Rebrands

The bottle spilled a pinwheel of schnapps as it fell into the dark depths of the facility. The black armour, more than a little suggestive of antique plate mail, cocked its head at the faint splintering of glass far below as the shorter, feminine armoured figure by his side handed over a remote control featuring a glowing red button.

“Ah, it ist gut to be back from Valhalla!”

He brought a gauntleted fist down on the button. The facility began to wake from its long slumber ; lights reignited, and machinery grumbled and fumed to action after seventy five years of inactivity. 

The figure raised its faceplate, the Red Skull within smiling, hugely. He played with a tiny device clamped to his throat. 

His voice registered the twangs and beats of an Alabama accent : “It’s time for us to become ‘Merican, Blaze, ma dear, and fight the _good_ fight!”

He toggled the emergency release switch on his _Auslander_ armour ; the panoply fell away, the helmet joining the bottle far below on the concrete factory floor : and apart from the red skull, he was dapper in a three piece sharkskin suit. 

Hartsblud watched her chief with a wary Germanic ardor. He wasn’t exactly the same man who had literally vanished into Asgard five years previously. He was either happier or insane or perhaps a mixture of the two. Either way the boredom of her vigil was over : Der Boss was back und he had a plan! 

She clicked her armoured heels, and enthusiastically cried ; “Ja, mein Chef!” 

Johann Schmidt raised a bony brow at his chief crony’s performance. 

Hartsblud raised her beaver, her forehead scrunched above thought narrowed pale blue eyes ; and scrambled together her best English approximation : “Uh…yes, my war chief!”

The Red Skull laughed aloud, rested a large, red hand atop the twenty point rack atop Hartsblud's helmet.

“Close enough, liebchen ; there’s _plenty_ of time!” The Alabama twanged German word for sweetheart sounded great to the ears of the besotted Blud.

The onetime cipher clerk for the German High Command thought, 'If only he _really_ meant it!' 

Johann Schmidt united his twang and his vocabulary : “Fire up the factory, sweetie ; we’ve got a country to protect from all sorts of _riffraff!_ ”

“Ja…I mean, yes, my liege!” She clicked her heels, jumped into the hole ; flared her flight system to blaze into the guts of what had been a World War Two Hydra production facility.


	2. Malling over History

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The National Mall would impress an ex Nazi!

Walking the National Mall was Schmidt’s habit after lobbying on the Hill : it reminded him of how great his previous employer could have been. There was also a delicious irony of his security detail keeping a totalitarian bubble around him in the Ultimate American public space. Beside him, his relatively petite executive assistant—he was six foot two—sashayed her five foot eleven feminine frame draped in a suit only a tad less mannish than her boss’. A silver and diamond Edelweiss pin, rode on the worsted grey of the suit like a campaign badge. She had not entirely lost her Bavarian country girl big city goggle ; Schmidt was amused to see his alpha minion still sneak wide eyed glances at the seemingly endless monuments that cropped up endlessly within the park space of the National Mall. I He had made a point of taking his day’s end strolls with Blesse Flammen to educate his bumpkin minion in the ways of the modern world. Today’s walk was especially significant.

The thirty foot figure of a man emerged from a roughly hewn cliff face. Rusk turned his angular, grey side burned head first to the statue and then to the severe prettiness of his executive assistant.

“Tell me what’cha see, angel.”

Blaze tilted her fiery caesar haircut to consider the stonework. There were zero signs of contemplation : her brow remained smooth. Her lip curled but before she could follow it with a venomous comment, her boss tapped her head with his silver eagle headed walking stick. She jumped, looked at him, uncomprehending.

“It isn’t Der Führer’s world.” His expression changed minutely, he looked directly through his underling. “It never was.” The past cleared from his gaze. “ He redirected his cane at the statue.

“That is why _he_ lost.”

Now her brow was properly engaged. “That? It is not the man, but something larger?”

Johann let his native language out to play : teaching was so much fun!

“Ja und nein.” 

The furrow in the pretty brow creased further : “It is both?”

“Güt !” He switched back to his all Americana speech pattern. 

“The man and the idea are part of what makes America the greatest country the world has ever known!”

“Here, anyone can be great?”

He tapped her shoulder affectionately with his walking stick ; readopted his American twang: “Absolutely anyone, suh-gah!”

She walked around the monument. The Skull waited, grinning his Rusk grin. Reading the memorial’s quotations, she called out, “But he’s a pacifist!”

“I did not say he was perfect : I said he was great.”

The security component, situated some meters away were too well paid to pay any attention to the oddities, and accents of their boss’ conversation with his executive assistant. 

“But what is he great for? Is it something about this despair mountain and hope stone nonsense?”

Rusk laughed. 

“Metaphor obscures truth like golden arabesques of cloud hide the setting sun : well it’s simile.”

Blaze poked her flame haired head out from the corner of the statue.

“Was*?”

“He did not believe in the Master Race.”

“Ah.” She didn’t see at all. 

****

Further along the walk, by the World War II monument, Blesse cum Blaze finally asked the question that Johann knew had been driving her nearly mad all the time of their closely guarded stroll. She remembered to keep it American : “Please for the love of Gawd, spill Boss! Are we wheels-up on the deal, or what?”

Rusk pretended to scowl.

“You’re awfully pushy! I’m almost forgetting who’s the boss and who’s the hired hand.”

Blaze steadied herself against the stone of the North Pacific fountain within the elaborate memorial ; complained, in an ever southwards driving accent : “Ah know jus ‘nough to be loos’n ma mind!” Johann appreciated the psychology of the smoother tones of educated affectation cracking under stress to reveal the root hillbilly truth. 

‘What a show! This is why she’s my trusted lieutenant!’ 

She continued to devolve her speech pattern : “Why weren’t I even there wit ya? It’s far too 2016 for it ta be Man Talk, right?” 

Rusk held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture.

“That would be difficult given that the Chair of the Homeland Security Committee is named Virginia Jackson Lee.” 

He didn’t mention that, in his opinion, the petite fifty-something blonde Lee was made the men on the committee look like a limp bunch of ladyboys.

Blaze dared a glare that left Johann Schmidt feeling an oddly mixed feeling of parental pride and nettled employer. 

He dripped exactly the right amount of ire into his voice : “Am I not answering you to your full expectations?”

Blaze startled. 

“Nein…No!, Boss! I am yours to command!”

“Well then, you have four months to hire the core team for AEGIS.”

“Wunde…excellent!” 

****

Blaze Tisephone sat at her desk and looked over the top of her stack of dossiers at the white dome of Capitol Hill outside the window of her Boss’ Cannon House Office Building office, and thought : ' Speer would have loved it here : it’s just like his plan for Berlin!”

She returned her eyes to the open dossier in front of her, her eyes widening the more of it she read. 

She closed the dossier, placed it on the very short stack next to the very tall stack. 

Under her breath, she declared, “John Walker, Amerikanisch Übermensch*, welcome to AEGIS!”

The part of her that was sexually frustrated, fully functional cyborg also hoped to welcome Walker to participate in other…duties. A thrill ran through her just thinking about all of that six foot four Aryan splendour. Then her unrequited ardour for her chief made her blush in shame. Blesse was as _complicated_ a weibsbild* as she was an unsophisticated one.

Still, the blonde and blue eyed hunk in the photograph woke the needs that she usually and hopelessly reserved for Johann Schimdt. She squirmed in her seat, attempted to distract her hormones with the next packet bearing the interesting title, Prof. Cobalt & J. Awesome.

These two were interesting. Scuttlebutt had it that, before they had become part of Spiderman’s rogues gallery one year previously, they had literally fallen out of a storm laden sky. She was some sort of snarky mad scientist ; he was an inordinately happy bodyguard with melée and ranged energy powers. Currently, both were doing time in the SMAD^ facility in the Bikini Atoll nuclear test reserve for an esoteric list of villainy including something called Unsolicited & recondite utilization of CERN LHC. What worked for Blaze was that they, besides being a physically striking couple—he was tall, raven maned, sardonically handsome in an oddly blue skin hue and Prussian like facial scar way; she was a striking athletic green woman with black hair done up in an elaborate braid—they were known to virtually no one outside of this Spider Man, and a select number of SHIELD and SMAD personnel : they were clay.

She placed the dossier atop Walker’s ; continued reading. 

****

Amerikanisch Übermensch : American superman  
weibsbild : woman  
^Supra-Maximum Atoll Detention  
AEGIS (AgEncy Guarding International Security)


	3. A Capitol Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first half of what will be a job interview.

Cobalt looked great in the three piece suit and he knew it as he, accompanied by his annoyingly zestful girlfriend cum bodyguard, also dressed to the Capitol Nines in a tight little skirt suit that rested skillfully upon the dangerous knife edge of conservative & sexy, strode up the steps of the fortress-like Canon Office Building. She, by nature of her vim and job, always led him a little ; he didn’t mind : he loved the lively twitch of her hard bottom under the thin summer weight material of the dark red skirt. He had missed that bottom, and the attached woman, during their six month detention in that odd tropical prison. She caught him ogling her ; smoothed her skirt down, accidentally tangling a finger in the hem to tug it up over the lowest curve of her posterior. He almost missed a step at the brazen peek of bare butt, an impressive bulge in his trousers speaking to his appreciation of the performance. She made a faux embarrassed little squeal, pulled her skirt down in a movement that was almost as compelling as her literally cheeky flash. several people openly stared, or at least tried not to be quite so open about it, as the power couple powered up the stairs and into the marbled opulence of old school lobby.

Two svelte thirty-something business suited women eyed Cobalt and Jade more openly than anyone else. One, blonde and pneumatic, focussed on him ; the other, petite and brunette, keenly watched exactly what Cobalt was admiring.

“Who’s the couple?”

The brunette, imaging herself exploring the full extent of that delectable shade of green, murmured, “Don’t know, but I’d sure like to find out!”

****

The office was all angular black leather furniture, chrome accents, backlit glass tabletops, and indirect lighting. It possessed a curiously retrograde Futurist look that Cobalt found clinically endearing. All Jade saw was a load of uncomfortable perches : she really wasn’t much of a sitter anyway. 

The woman that led them in, a striking nordic blonde in a skirt suit that would have been conservative on almost any other woman, introduced them to the impressive man seated behind an equally impressive desk of what appeared to be cleverly inner lit obsidian. 

“ Professor Cobalt, Ms. Awesome ; my employah, Mr. Rusk.”

The expression on the face behind the smooth rectangle of volcanic glass broke out of its seemingly natural stormy glower into a sudden burst of sunny splendour. 

“It’s goddamn great to be finahl’ly meet’n ya’ll!” He was in front of Cobalt, large hand extended, almost before either visitor could react : Dell Rusk moved with an almost uncanny grace. 

Cobalt took a grip that informed him that there was more behind it, if necessary. Rusk did not hold back when he took the seemingly svelte manicured hand of the woman with the outlandishly fun name of Jade Awesome ; the other two people in the room felt jealous stirrings at the sight of the two claspers grinning hugely at each other as they fought to an apparently mutually satisfying standoff. 

Dell Rusk toned the grin down to a smile ; gestured to the side of the office populated by three chairs and a coffee table. The couple sat : Cobalt sitting squarely, mannishly ; Jade perching restlessly, her booted left foot rapping a tattoo against the parquet flooring. Rusk took the remaining seat ; turned to address his assistant.

“Blaze, sug’ah, mix us some drinks ; Ah’ll have th’ use’jal.” 

She considered Cobalt and Jade with pale blue eyes bordering on grey.

Cobalt stretched his legs out, pointed his well polished brogues.

“I’m dying for a Depth Charge!” 

Rusk raised his eyebrows.

Jade shimmied her bottom slightly upon the chair, her thighs parting just long enough for a near subliminal flash of her full go-commando status. Rusk, directly across from her, continued as if nothing had happened ; Tisephone, behind and to the side of her boss, goggled at the indecency of the American hussy. Rusk saved her with a gentle nudge ; she hid her fluster behind her well honed adjutant armour. 

Jade enthused, “I could use a Jade or two, thanks!” 

Rusk’s eyebrows lifted further; consulted Ms. Blaze : “You know….?”

“Wha’ kind of personahl assist’nt would Ah be if Ah didn’t?”

She retired to a bottle laden sideboard ; concocted one elaborate green cocktail, one rudimentary binary drink of Samuel Adams Rebel IPA beer with a submerged shot glass of Jack Daniels bourbon, and a neat double of triple malt Johnnie Walker Odyssey whiskey. As Blaze efficiently plied her mixological skill set, the two guests casually probed the size of their new cage with seemingly idle chitchat.

Jade enthused : “It’s quite the office, Mr Rusk!”

“Yes,”agreed Cobalt : “You must be quite a mover and shaker to warrant such an office so close to the dome!”

Rusk shrugged. “Ah do what Ah can.”

Jade, having noted whom she had and whom she hadn’t flustered with her little skin show, decided to stop skirting the business end of the meeting with an almost direct question.

“And we’re here for what you can’t?”

That got a reaction, albeit a subtle one : Rusk minutely tensed in his chair, his nonchalant air roiling ever so slightly. Cobalt’s reaction to his partner’s faux pas wasn’t subtle at all : he glared at her.

“Jade!…”

Rusk laughed hugely.

“She reminds me of you, Blaze!” Tisephone stiffened ; sloshed a tiny amount of extravagantly expensive Johnnie Walker on the wooden floor as she passed him his glass ; delivered the others spill free. Holding his leaded crystal tumbler aloft, Rusk toasted the visitors with, “To our spirited women : they are our greatest treasure!”

Blaze cum Blesse thought that she kept her face carefully neutral as she thought, ’If only he’d plunder mine!’ 

Cobalt fished out his shot glass, raised it : “We’d be lost without you!”

Jade Awesome hoisted her lime garnished martini glassed green concoction, grinned hugely at the men, sipped ; tipped her glass towards Blaze with her own toast.

“ To the men in our lives!” The woman named Blaze winced ever so slightly as Jade continued her salute. "They keep our _Boudicas*_ at bay!" 

The reactions to the arcane toast were : Rusk, chuckling, returned the toast, drank ; Cobalt raised a quizzical glass ; Blaze, thinking she knew what the crazy extra-diemsional American meant, surgically swiped her boss' glass out of his hand ; tipped it back at Jade, tossed the remaining contents of golden liquor down her throat ; returned the empty tumbler to her amazed boss' hand.

*********

*Boudica : British Celtic queen who led a revolt in 60 AD against the occupying Roman imperial forces that led to the burning of London, called Londinium, and the deaths of eighty thousand Romans and Britons before her forces were defeated. She suicided to escape capture and her name lives on--much less than it did during Victorian times--as an epic badass.


	4. Debriefed Dealings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the Washington meeting, Cobalt & Jade Awesome mate and collaborate.

A glowing, if greenly, naked Jade fell sweatily, energetically upon the equally starkers supine, gasping Cobalt ; kissed him with full on Friday Baldwin precision and care. She broke the buss, a dewy spider thread filament of their intermingled spittle bridging the gap between their panting mouths.

“Boy, do we grok* great, or what?”

Cobalt looked distant for a space of time that could almost be measured only in picoseconds. 

“Yes, It’s as if we were so knowledgeable of each other as to have traded places.”

Jade squeezed his cheeks, kissed the ridiculously exaggerated pout.

“What does that even mean?”

Cobalt shrugged as much as he could being pinned to the wrecked bed by his muscularly sleek alpha minion cum significant other. 

“It means : we’re not yet done grokking!” He grabbed her ; she grabbed him back.

“Hoo...Oh!...ray!” 

*****

An entangled collection of sweaty limbs, the couple had a, for them, typically post coital conversation.

Nibbling on a blue earlobe, Jade murmured, “That’s what she’d love to do with him!”

Cobalt, looking smug, hands behind his head, said, “Lie ‘in the rank sweat of an enseamèd bed…honeying and making love?’ ”**

Jade giggled, jabbed him gently in the shoulder.

“Verily, you sexy nerd!”

“So that’s why she was acting so odd during the interview?

Jade cocked an eyebrow : “So you’re not entirely self absorbed after all?”

Cobalt ran a hand down the back and to the of the excitingly taut curve of rump of the woman atop him ; gave a squeeze.

“Things have to be pretty exciting to bring me out.”

Jade shifted her body enticingly over Cobalt’s, and planted a stirring kiss upon his mouth.

“Thanks for the compliment!” She smooched him again as a reward. “And, yes, she’s crazy for him.”

“He knows?” 

She shook her head, but answered affirmatively : “She's attached to a man for whom sex is no more than a useful tool ; one he better use soon.”

Cobalt’s eyebrows surged upwards : “What do you mean?”

"She sloshed his drink on purpose."

"Even you can be clumsy, hotness."

She nodded, soberly. "It was both a minor and a major rebellion."

Cobalt's eyes crossed a bit at his woman's line of thought : "What does that _even_ mean?"

"You saw Rusk's reaction : he hid it quickly, but he was..."

He finished for her. "Astonished."

"His proper little soldier is acting up."

"There's something else about her. I was too busy noting her drink spill and sexual impatience to notice the larger pattern : she’s too poised."

"So his executive assistant is a ballerina soldier. So what?"

"No, I mean she's far _too_ elegant and graceful : she was..." She hunted for the correct word, "Spooky!"

"What does it mean?"

she frowned, prettily : “They’re a complex couple.”

“Like us?” He playfully swatted her bum. 

“Given how graceful I am and how self absorbed you are?” She gave him a noogie. “Exactly like us but with a whole lot less of this!”

She made a grab for his rising anatomy. 

****

In the tangle of love wrecked bed, the very toned and very green woman addressed her very blue, slightly less toned lover.

“So, what did you think of Rusk’s spiel?”

She ran a finely manicured fingertip in circles around a cyan nipple as he considered her question.

“It's foolish to believe that we’ll get everything we want if be part of Rusk’s secret task force. What did he call it?”

“AEGIS : AgEncy Guarding International Security.” 

Cobalt laughed : “That sounds like an awfully defensive way to cover up…”

“…all sorts of skulduggery?” Jade laughed, not without a slight uneasy waver. 

Cobalt hugged his woman hard. "Just until we can sneak our way back to the CERN 'collider."

“Is that so important?”

That stopped Cobalt. “I don’t honestly know : I like the ways things are now.”

Awesome nodded. “So do I, but” She gripped his lover, ardently. “Whatever our resources were there, here they’re...

He finished the thought : " _Nonexistent_ here. So, _no_ choice?"

“What?” Jade drew her man in to a hug that was no longer sexual. “We’ll always have a choice! _Always!_ For now let’s see how things go before we rethink _our_ stance.” She was rewarded with that rarest experience of her lover : he cast off the armour of humour, and shivered in her grasp. 

She shivered in his grasp : “I _really_ don’t trust him!” 

Jade stroked his jet hair. “I only trust _you_!” 

Tearfully, he surged up against her ; she knew that she was far luckier than she deserved to be. 

****

*Robert Heinlein’s gone Oxford, although the word’s kind of arcane now.  
**With apologies to the Prince of Denmark & the Bard.


	5. Meet & Cheat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AEGIS is a complicated arrangement of monsters and agendas.

In the most secretive change room Jade Awesome—it was deep underground in the Great Smoky mountains—found herself contemplating a full body reflection of herself both fully encased and fully revealed within an outfit that was completely and totally ridiculous. 

The metallic finished and nearly sprayed-on jumpsuit adhered a garish red, white and blue tiger striped camouflage to just about every lithe detail of her body : AEGIS had been modest enough to provide her with a wee Brazilian anti camel toe crotch guard. She slid the half mask over her head ; saw that the spangles around the forehead and eyes completed the absurd pseudo American flag design. 

She placed a metal-flake red gauntlet across her breast ; felt the papilla poke of a braless breast ; solemnly giggled to her super patriotic stripper reflection, ’I pledge allegiance to my Nippily Flag…” Snorting, she kicked the door off of its hinges, tried her damnedest not to sashay in her Red White and very Blue costume down the governmental green hallway; failed spectacularly. 

She paused outside the drab double doors of the conference room bearing the equally drab tacked on sign informing the reader that what lay inside was for, ‘AEGIS personnel only!’ ; assembled her features into a sardonic ‘you want me to actually wear this?’ performance ; saloon swept both doors open, and stormed into the room.

The enormous conference room that she stormed into was decorated with enough unfurled raptor wings and arcane symbology to almost be a Nazi rally. There had been some sort of dick measuring battle in between a lithe Mediterranean woman and a muscular Nordic male ; it froze in shock at her furious flag-waving, double door entrance. 

Then, she saw ; she understood. 

The change in her demeanour was as abrupt as it was marvellous : angry body language flowed into the relaxed ease of unconcerned beauty as she swayed her way towards a Cobalt, almost equally ostentatiously outfitted amidst a crowd of sober, somber and drab outfits.

There were appreciative murmurs, and a wink from the attractive dark skinned epicene who had been arguing with the beefcake as she wrapped herself around the flowing Canadian flag imprinted across Cobalt’s shiny lab coat ; exclaimed, “You’ve always been my favourite pleasure trip, Canada!”

Cobalt angled his head up to smilingly lock eyes with his taller partner, “You’re always welcome, America! Do you have anything to declare?”

She slipped her hands under the coat ; breathed, “Manifest Destiny!”

Cobalt laughed, threw his hands up. “Canada surrenders!” 

America rewarded Canada’s capitulation with a full bodied clutch & kiss. 

The other assembled members of AEGIS looked on the international amour with various expressions and demeanours : The strapping blue eyed blonde Walker, shrink wrapped in a less insolent American flag motif than jade', stared at them with the unabashed scorn of the true believer.

Cobalt slipped his tongue across green seashell ear, whispered, "He's U.S. Agent : buff, brutal, boring." She took a closer look at the petite olive-skinned woman and noted dressed that the bulky, black tactical gear included a cod piece. Jade couldn't help but stare. 

Cobalt quipped, "I see you've noticed Snapshot's..."

Jade couldn't help herself : "Piece!"

Sensing the green girl's gawk, the Mediterranean beauty twinkled dark eyes at them, and blew a flirty kiss ; Jade blushed very fetchingly. The twinkle turned into a grin, and the wearer started walking towards the flustered game. 

"I hear tell that we share a similar skill set, Mz. Awesome." The voice fit the woman : quiet but with a smokey depth that made Jade think of the rumble of distant summer thunder. She felt Cobalt's hand settle protectively, possessively, on her shoulders ; a bit irked, she shrugged him off.

Jade parked her flustered arousal behind a facade of cool aplomb. She nodded at the other woman.

"We should spar sometime."

"I'd _love_ that!" Snapshot smouldered a final gaze at her ; again, Jade burned redly. "See you around!" Carmine Gallo flicked a little salute, headed back to her conversation with the sullen looking Walker.

A pair of tiny golden eyes under a sodden shock of lapis lazuli hair peered over the inner edge of a giant cut glass punch bowl, peered jealously at the flirting antics ; were joined at the rim by no fewer than four other similarly punch soaked, tiny heads.

The dark, voluptuous, red jump suited and red ponytailed woman browsing at the buffet table seemed content to consider the couple with no more than a glance, but what a look it was : sultry violet pupils flared over them.

Cobalt saw her looking : "“That’s Firebrand : she’s thermal.” He did a double take.

“I swear she was svelte when this shindig started!”

Then the android entered, and J. Awesome had the answer to the other question that had been bothering her. 

The impossible grace of the feminine movement appeared much more _organic_ for the naked robot than it was when Jade had met it in it’s human sheathe. The only adornments upon the completely unadorned chassis—Jade noted the central shutter and two smaller indications of concealed primary and secondary sexual characteristics—were the horizontal black red and yellow flag stripes painted on the left shoulder and a red Lambda straddling a round shield decorated with a stylized Medusa head upon the other. 

Jade thought, ’Hello, uncanny valley Blaze Tisiphone! Why're you obviously robotic today?’

She eyed the newest entry with what appeared to be cooler indifference than the rest if the room, her man included. She nudged him in the ribs ; he looked apologetic. 

The android took up a position at the lectern at the head of the table ; addressed the assembled in an accent that matched its German flagged shoulder patch : “Since ve zeem to haff everybody present, I vill begin.” The bright blue optics took in the populated punchbowl. 

“Snapshot, focus your… _associate_.”

Snapshot cut a sardonic little bow, turned to the punchbowl fairies ; blew them a theatrical kiss. The party of pixies flew wetly from the bowl to whirr an dragonfly dance around the elfin assassin ; as the dance quickened, the individual tiny nudes blurred and flowed into each other until only one was left. A five foot vodka soddened sprite stood on tiptoes, delivered a kiss accented by a low moan of pleasure from the kissed. A sexy fragrance of strawberries drifted across the room provoking erections and wet labia. Only Walker was immune : he frowned at the sultry display.Breaking the kiss, the composite fairy turned to face Cobalt and Jade to deliver an impudent stuck out tongue and a very appropriate accompanying whiff of lemons.

The android continued as if nothing odd had happened. “Welcome to the New Avengers. We’re not calling it that given the baggage associated with that name ; but that is essentially what we are.”

“What about Medusa?” That came quietly from the hard to sexually parse assassin holding sher all too easily parsed paramour who also looked inquiringly at the bot. 

“She’s a monster used for good.” A gold and silver arm swept the room ; “we’re monsters…”

Snapshot’s eyes narrowed. She came close to saying something that would have been deleterious to her position, but Jade butted in.

“And who’s Perseus?”

The assassin and her composite pixie traded an enigmatic look before sharing a pleasure darkened gaze at the Classically aware green woman. The faint scents of liquorice and orchids rippled across Jade's awareness, and suddenly she was almost painfully aware of her already costumed stiffened secondary sexual characteristics. She squirmed against Cobalt ; he, in turn, was enkindled by the basil scent of her arousal. 

“I am, if need be.” Dell Rusk strode into the room. He was impressive in a George C. Scott playing Patton manner in a field grey uniform-like suit, but Jade was far too busy bussing her beau to notice.

Rusk wanted to be vexed by the display of affection, but like all but two others in the room, he was charmed by the display ; the other two were amused that their signal had been misconstrued so completely. The newcomers were naive ; it was going to be fun using them. 

The lovers broke their clasp, returned their attentions to the purpose to which the chamber had been laid.

Rusk gestured towards the android : "As frau Maschine mentioned, we will be the new vanguard of government policy regarding national and international security concerns." 

Firebrand, through a mouthful of canapé, groused, "You make it sound like the diplomatic corps!"

Rusk would have looked serious if it weren't for the vigour in his eyes.

"I didn't hire you to put out fires." 

The dark haired woman smirked, scoffed another pastry.

Experiencing a disquieting mixture of arousal and discomfiture at the mass assemblage of hormones, charisma and mystery, Jade attempted to make her hold on Cobalt look less desperate than it felt. He noticed the extra element of pressure, accurately gauged it ; returned it with his own slightly overcharged squeeze. 


	6. Fluid Dynamics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Awesome and Cobalt get it on and shower it off.

Jade slid down the three inch width of cyan cock with the deliberate excitement of a woman dedicated to pleasure without being enthralled to it. Underneath and within her, Cobalt, or at least his erection, was literally within the grip of a mind and body blowing paradox : he seemed to know the organ he was within more than the one his girlfriend was currently cowgirling upon. She did her little hip swirl on the upstroke that he knew meant she was close to bursting, and it made his buried eight inches twitch and throb ; she knew they were about to achieve the coveted mutual orgasm. 

They cried out in shared release ; Awesome arched her back, her jaunty breasts pushing emerald nipples towards the anonymous drop tiles of the government facility bedroom ; Cobalt thrusted his hips up to remain deep within the clenching warmth of his lover’s vagina as he gushed : this time was no different. Gasping, he collapsed back onto the mattress, his come slicked cock twitching and spurting splashes and splatters of come across Jade’s thighs and the tangled wreckage of the bedclothes. 

A laughing, sweaty Jade looked down at her lover. “I’m sure you’re part, this part,” She took hold of the still half erect, fluid dripping cyan cock, “horse!” 

“I _am_ a sagittarius.” 

“You don’t believe in astrology!” She stuck a professorial right index finger skywards, and adopted the patented Cobalt Science! rant , “It’s hokum at best, intellect destroying at worst ; the sooner we do away with such playthings of the past the sooner we’ll reach a Golden Age of Science!”

He began hardening in her hand : “I love it when you talk _Science_!” 

“I’m _mocking_ you!”

“You mean, milking.” Jade’s left hand, ejaculate slick, was lazily coaxing cock with a sex life seemingly distinct from the higher, sardonic brain functions of the right. 

“A little bit from column A ,” She brought her right hand up to her mouth, wetted it with a sexy curve of glistening tongue ; slid the slick appendage down the now fully erect eight inches of cyan shaft. “A little bit of Column B.”

Cobalt gave a pleasurable gasp, bucked his hips, a dollop of Cowper's fluid pearling at the zenith of his glans. 

“Jesus, Doc, I’m…uh _you’re_ nothing but cerebrum, cock, and come!”

Cobalt had a flash of insight that didn’t feel entirely like his own awareness. She feels it too : like we’re been flipped by some quirk of the Particle gods. He smiled winningly up at her.

“Throw manly musculature into that and I’ll be like unto a Greek god!”

“I’m your muscle, brainiac.” She cut off his retort with a hummingbird tongue dart at the weeping apex of penis. 

All he could manage was a gasped, “Touché!” 

*********

In a decidedly non-governmental shower—it was an enormous glassed in affair with a ceiling mounted rig that could be configured for either shower head or waterfall sluice—the couple cleansed each other in a ritual, which while endearing, was not in the least bit sexual : it would have seemed paradoxical if it didn’t simply indicate that their relationship was deeper than a boff & blow hookup. 

Cobalt squirted a generous amount of body wash onto a wetted loofah, proceeded to scrub his reproductive ejecta from Jade Awesome’s toned green stomach. As he worked the cleansing implement in small, soapy circles, he conversed with his squeeze.

"So Rusk sure has amassed himself a randy raft of operatives, ourselves included!" He swirled a corner of the dried marrow fruit to dislodge a splotch of semen in Jade's shapely navel.

"It isn't Rusk : it's his horny robot lieutenant." Jade flexed her washboard abs, her 'inney' popping to ease her man's work. "Did you notice that everyone but that asexual Walker and us are sexy in ways that aren't het?"

Having finished with the belly button, Cobalt worked the sudsy loofah up the taut, come spattered six-pack.

"That seems true for the intersex assassin and her pixie swarm but what about thermal girl?"

Jade remembered the brief smouldering glance of the curvy woman : "I'm pretty sure Firebrand's lesbian."

"What does it mean?" Cobalt lathered Jade's athletic, upturned breasts.

"Androids dream of electric Snu-snu."

"Ah!" said a Cobalt who had zero idea of what his soapy, Delphic woman was talking about.


	7. Simulations & Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team's first training session utilizing the potentially terrifying powers of a new character, . It reveals things about Sara Verve, Capt. Walker, and something of one of the enemies of Dell Rusk.

Dressed in his AEGIS jumpsuit, Dell Rusk entered the chamber that was an odd combination of gleaming operating room and opulent teen bedroom. He turned to the scrubs dressed woman leading the surgical team gathered about the medical equipment surrounding the room's oddly caged bed, and its unconscious, life support tubed and wired occupant.

He grinned happily : "Wakey-wakey eggs 'n bakey!"

Dr. Lilith Atman was used to her boss' eccentricities ; unlike her somewhat confused staff, she knew exactly what Dell meant by his hokey exclamation.

"Bring the patient up to threshold consciousness."

Rusk mused, Someone actually useful from India! All of _der blodsinn_ Hindu mysticism Nazi me had to put up with! Shambala, ha! Now it's time to put the subcontinent to actual good use! He watched Atman's team work the equipment connected to the fluttering eyelids of the Kenyan teenager.

The dark eyes opened suddenly, focussed on Rusk with camera shutter speed. He waved the surgical group from the room. Once they were gone, he stepped over to the side of the bed, looked down at the strapped down, ventilator masked girl. 

"It's a shame that you were too stubborn to do this _willingly_ , Wargame! : you could have been so much more than just my..." He smiled. "game machine."

The girl raised her head off of the pillow, shouted through the fogged plastic of the respirator, "You kidnapped me?!"

He kept his expression grave : it was tough given the situation. "Not me, Kioni : the _government_." He relaxed his face into a grin : "And the kicker, Pumpkin, is that thanks to that clandestine executive _Avernus _tier in your _Ely3ium_ MMO, it's all _completely_ legal_!"_

The girl furrowed her brow, and shut her eyes in concentration .

"That _talent_ of yours isn't going to work, honey chile." He tapped the iron mesh of the cage surrounding the bed. "This here Faraday cage blocks wi-fi."

She dropped her head resignedly back onto the pillow. "What do you..?"

"Do you have any idea how hard it is to train a super secret task force in the field without anyone being the wiser?" He held his arms as wide apart as he could. "Enormously... _unless_...."

Kioni wryly finished, "You have a person who can personally simulate it all where ever you want."

Rusk's smile widened. "It's _almost_ what you do best, Kioni! " He strolled over to the eighty inch flat screen on the wall opposite the foot of the bed, switched it on : a digital flurry of snow formed the title, _Operation : Precious Snowflake_ "This includes all of the environmental and operational data you'll need to craft your show." He gestured to the screen. "It's cued to your voice." 

"You have four hours." Rusk left with a cheery wave.

With a sigh, Kioni got to work. It did not take her long to become engrossed : the dossier was as fascinating as it was well produced. She felt the components of the overall simulation begin to slide neatly together within her growing mental structure. If she was to be a prisoner, at least the cage and the labour were first rate! She'd also use her gift to consider how to escape her imprisonment. 

*******

The training facility was, for Dr. Cobalt, far more interesting than was the actual simulated training. It was a virtual reality system that sidestepped the traditional sensory input nodes to somehow drop their sensory data directly into their corresponding grey matter appraisal sites ; and all of it without any manifest projector or receptor equipment. One second the team was standing within an empty rough-hewn limestone cavern ; the next they were fully immersed into the chill wind and snow of a boreal forest. He was still considering it ten minutes later when Jade plucked her man out of the way of a spray of Spetsnaz SR-3MP tracer* fire. 

“Doc, stop thinking about the game _station_ , and start playing the _game_!”

A bullet whined off of the left shoulder of Jade’s remarkably armoured skintight Old Glory suit ; she felt the grazing impact and wondered if the mind blowing technology would find a way to even bruise the skin underneath. Spectral metadata fluoresced briefly over her stricken shoulder, 'Graze : agent integrity 98%.'

Leading with his shield, deflecting a stream of automatic rifle labeled by an increasingly growing percentage of glowing metadata as the highly trained virtual commando unit hidden amongst the snow laden pine trees concentrated their fire on him, team leader Walker issued orders over the command radio network.

“Firebrand, lay down defensive fire to our flanks and rear ; then support Snapshot. Snapshot, deploy ‘Ring to our hot target, snipe ‘em! ‘Spangle, if we loose _Boffin_ ** we’ve lost the mission!”

A chorus of terse acknowledgments crowded the command channel ; the orders were executed. Walker formed up with Jade, and shielded Maven. A chunky Firebrand lit the tip of her left middle finger, exhaled her flammable breath ; cast a walking flamethrower stream of fire over the boreal forest ; soon a wall of fire, designated 'Environmental Manipulation : Defensive +30', blazed to the sides and rear of the AEGIS unit. 

Snapshot cast a scent of anise at the squadron of five lapis lazuli haired pixies hovering around her more than usually armoured form—her signature codpiece hidden under more winterized gear—and they, melting into the environment, darted forward to mark their targets. Snapshot, reading the complex sensory returns of Fairy Ring’s intelligence, drew her twin mini sniper rifles from their sheathes across her back ; began her unique brand of balletic sniping, each and every shot punctuated with a luminous trail of multiple 'Kill Shot' messages with a mounting tally ghosted in her acrobatic wake. 

The firewall completed, a slightly less fleshy Verve, lit up her body ; strode into a bullet stream which was designated 'Threat Zero' as bullets flared into sublimated gas before they could touch Firebrand's blazing body. Laughing, she ran into a platoon of panicked soldiers ; began immolating screaming Russians with her flaming hands. Her attendant simulation information 'Kill Count' began to catch fire.

The intelligence, computer or otherwise, running the simulation awarded the victory to AEGIS : over the battlefield, giant crimson letters spelled out, 'Crushing Victory!'. Enemy gunfire slowed and halted as the remaining Russian force attempted to disengage and escape. 

A frowning, skinny Firebrand said something in Spanish : ¡La próxima vez tengo que quemar más que solo árboles! ¿Entender?”

Walker’s return smile was as wintry as Verve’s scowl was sultry : “You’ll have the entire base to burn down…”

“And personnel!” 

“With _one_ exception.”

“Si, we _need_ her!” 

Walker threw her a silver wrapped package.

“Good : now fuel up, Firebrand!”

She tore the bar open, took a bite of the moulded food stuff ; moued : “Does it have to taste like mierda de mula?”

Walker ignored her. 

“Form up, people, we’ve got another five K’s and a rogue genetics lab to blow!”

Cobalt whispered to Jade, “Walker’s okay with Firebrand being a psycho?” 

Jade whispered back, “What worries me is that maybe he's a bigger one!”

*****

The facility was a fortress : a concrete bunker surrounded by razor wire, machine gun equipped emplacements and two orbiting helicopter gunships. From the treeline thirty meters distant, Walker assayed the defences with binoculars.

"If you haven't figured it out people, that wasn't a random patrol we hit back there."

A plumper Firebrand spit, "Sin mierdra, gringo!"

Snapshot chuckled. "Part of the game is figuring out who sold us out..."

"And _spanking_ them?" Jade Awesome, previous name unknown due to a runaway particle accelerator dimensional  & biological translocation, added with a disingenuous grin. Cobalt kept a straight face as he watched his singular boy/girlfriend add to her false facade of foolishness.

Firebrand leered at Jade : it made her skin crawl.

"Dale un culo caliente, perra estupida!"

Walker commanded as he continued to survey the target : "Can it, 'Brand!" He lowered the field glasses, spoke to the team.

"We're going to lie low, and hit them at zero two hundred."

Cobalt observed, "That's fourteen hours from now : won't that be time for them to get help?"

Walker smiled grimly. "This place is so far off the map that it'd take half a year and three _Pinko_ oversight committees to even find out that it even _exists!_

Both Cobalt and Jade noted the interesting term Walker had used to label the Russians : What's that going to tell me about you, bossman, once we get back to the real world? Jade wondered.

"We can take our time and wait for them to get tired, get sloppy. Get comfortable, except you, Boffin : you're on first watch. Wake 'Brand at fifteen hundred : Jade, eighteen hundred ; 'Shot, twenty one hundred, and I'll sit the final."

*****

Underneath giant floating message, _Imminent Kill_ , The helicopter pinwheeled licks of flame and fragments of disintegrating rotor blades into the night sky. A flaming, laughing comet, Firebrand roared around for a second pass at the Russian machines. The second chopper in the formation, labeled _Evade : successful_ tried to veer away from its stricken companion, but Walker, swearing at his team member’s antics, expertly threw his shield into its tail blades ; the chopper’s message changed to, Evade : unsuccessful as shorn blades flew into the air, and the whirlybird whirled into its fully ablaze twin. Both machines exploded, and plunged to earth in a cascade of burning fuel, debris and firecracker bursts of detonating munitions. Above the wreckage, lettering flared, Ki...

****

Adding a shot of energy drink to her third coffee, Kioni thought, That was too cool! Time to give them the fun meta data! She inserted a new set of messages into her conceptual render of her cognitive simulation. 

****

The lettering faded to be replaced by the far fancier message, _Excessive_ Style Bonus! 

A rocket pod attached to a crumpled pylon flared six contrails towards the entrance of the fortified compound ; the resultant slow motion eruptions of flame and flying debris destroyed the gate, the guard towers and opened up a fire singed hole in the front of the bunker.

Walker watched the unfolding event with a scowl ; Jade Awesome whooped, “This game _rocks_!”

Cobalt looked thoughtful, “It all seems rather demonstrative for a com…”

Snapshot squeezed in between them, threw her arms about their shoulders ; suggestively exclaimed, “I can’t wait to see how you two _handle_ yourselves in there!” There was a heady rush of jasmine, and suddenly Cobalt and Jade both had two sulky little nude shoulder angels. 

An irate Walker saved the couple from the bizarre fey come-on : “Keep it in your pants, ’Shot!”

Shrugging, Snapshot trailed her fingers down two shoulders as she stepped back. She exhaled liquorice scent, and the composite members of Fairy Ring looked quite happy as they winged back to hover over Snapshot. 

A very skinny Firebrand touched down in a fire lit fog of sublimating snow. 

Walker glared at her : “That was stupidly _wasteful_ , Firebrand!”

Emerging from the hissing vapour, Sara Verve shrugged : “It’s _only_ a game, gringo. I have all of the shit-bar body-refills in the world.”

Walker pointed a blunt index finger at her. “And in the real world?”

She shrugged almost skeletal shoulders as she caught the thrown foil wrapped package ; tore it open with tobacco stained teeth, and wolfed down the brown slab of cultured ultra-protein. As she walked back into the treeline to join the others, Verve did not see Walker's grim smile.

As he re-raised his night vision binoculars to study the wounded installation, he muttered, “You're _my_ not too smart bomb, Verve.” 

“That looks far too inviting. Snapshot, I want _all_ Tink eyes in!” Walker gestured his optical device towards the flame licked hole in the bunker.

Snapshot sketched an impudent salute, and summoned the component members of Fairy Ring for a sexy little impromptu briefing : a little fairy-french kiss for each of the five pixies imparted the scent coding necessary for the fey five to understand their instructions. 

Walker scowled but he did not interrupt the antics. With the final kiss just as Walker was about to comment, a meta message flashed a pink thumping hearted ‘Kiss & Kill : +10% bonus, all actions’ above Snapshot and her pixie squad. Jade grabbed Cobalt, smooched him with extra vigilance ; was rewarded : ’French bonus : +15 swelled hearts over her and her breathy man. 

“How ‘bout it, gringo?” Leering, Verve puckered her lips at Walker.

Walker gritted his teeth ; it almost looked like he was smiling. 

The five pixies zipped towards the breach in the bunker, glamours blurring their bodies into the snowy night. 

Snapshot felt the odd sensation of receiving five subtlety different sensory inputs of the essentially single entity that she alone knew as _Nyxsa_ and everyone else called either the Tinker Belles or Fairy Ring. 

“It’s odd : power’s off.” She talked with the weirdly dissociated voice of a person stretched across, counting herself, six points of view.

Walker rubbed his chin. “Unless they keep their generat…Snapshot, pull them out!”

The air was suddenly filled with a loud klaxons and a giant black exclamation point outlined in yellow and red banding formed above the bunker.

Looking shocked, Cobalt yelled, “What the...”

Five frantic fairies fled from the bunker to form up behind their mistress into their wide eyed, clingy five foot nude focussed form just as the front of the bunker exploded in a storm of flying rebar-veined chunks of concrete. Twin steel doors the size of battle tanks whirled overhead in a frisbee flightpath that shaved a long furrow in the forrest behind the team. Everyone but Firebrand reflexively dropped to the snowy ground as the doors roared overhead with the sound of flying locomotives : hands raised to the sky, a nearly skeletal Verve laughed wildly.

Twin red beams of light stabbed out of the darkness at them ; and Jade, picking herself up out of the snow, exclaimed, “Boss fight!”

****

In the faraday caged control room, Blaze gave her boss a disbelieving look as the giant, red spotlit eyed cyborg tiger polar bear chimera leapt out of the ruined Soviet base ; Schmidt registered her expression with a complex feeling of prideful regret : soon she’s going to get to big for her britches. He grinned at his internalized Americanism.

“Why not?” He winked at his alpha underling : “Do _you_ know what the Soviets are really science-screwing around with for real?”

“But endangered animal super weapons? Wargame’s the one _screwing_ with us!”

Humming the chorus to _Eye in the Sky^_ , Schmidt keyed the microphone to the room occupied by the teenager known as Wargame.

“That’s excellent, Kioni, sugah plum! I knew you'd take to this like a sow to slop!”

*****

Carmine Gallo laughed. 

“It was tougher for me to put away that double-endangered animal than it was putting _you_ down for being the double agent!”

Jade bowed in appreciation : “The only thing that could have made that Boss more of a guilty kill would have been if it had a dose of baby seal!” 

Dr. Cobalt cum Maven was trying hard not to stare at the separate, tiny Tinker Belles which Gallo gently brushed away when they came a little too close to a part of her physique just a little too erogenous for the briefing, or the literal debriefing room if the filthy minded component atomies of Fairy Ring had their—her?—way! One nuzzled at a stiff nipple poking an exciting little pout in the white wife beater that Carmine wore after having removed her bulky winter gear and tactical vest. One settled for nibbling at Gallo’s left earlobe : an action earning the breathy toleration of her mistress. The other three wrestled the codpiece away before Gallo could dislodge them ; they giggly-spearmint-scented flew away with their booty ; the extra-dimensional couple were treated to the impressive and unmistakable bulge in Snapshot’s tighty whitey briefs. Gallo shrugged at the obviously put out Walker.

“You know what the ‘Belles are like : they’re almost as dirty as Verve!”

Back to her comfortable level of fat, fleshy Verve shot Gallo a flaming phoenix version of the middle finger. 

“Cojo con fuego, chica polla!” 

Smiling, Gallo returned the gesture albeit without the extra bit of fire.

“Penicillin will fix that burn, bitch!”

Walker was about to intercede in the general cattiness when he was saved the trouble by the arrival of the bossman and his alpha minion.

Rusk, resplendent in his AEGIS shoulder patched uniform, strode into the room ; the gleaming ‘nude’, save for her German flagged shoulder decal and sexual characteristic iris apertures, frau Maschine accompanied him with an armful of hard print materials. 

Rusk smiled that smile that made Jade Awesome think of a cat that had eaten a choice canary.

“That was fine as a frog’s hair split four ways, people!” 

Cobalt raised a perplexed eyebrow : “Thanks?” 

Gently plucking the squirming, lemon fuming pixie from her earlobe, Carmine chuckled, “That’s our boss, dropping compliments from so far south of the Mason-Dixon line that’d confuse most Southerners!”

The grin expanded to a feline that had feasted on a flock of yellow birds.

“You can’t get any more Southern than me, Sug!”

Frau Maschine thought, _Ja, Bavaria!_

Rusk turned to the silent teutonic Walker. 

“Agent, I know you find your team _bohemian_ , but you did well!” He turned his happy glance to the rest of the team : “You _all_ did! Now read up : there’s some new intel, and I want my boys ’n gals to be able to scent out all the skunks when I send y’all out a hunt’n!” 

At her cue, frau Maschine started handing out her materials. 

******

*Russian special forces armed with automatic rifles. The tracer rounds (roman candle ammunition used as an aiming aid for the actual bullets) are an artificial training addition.

**Not Cobalt’s official team designation (It’s Maven) : Walker’s an _asshole_.

^A 1982 song by The Alan Parsons Project.


End file.
